Superconducting circuits are one of the leading technologies proposed for quantum computing and cryptography applications that are expected to provide significant enhancements to national security applications where communication signal integrity or computing power are needed. They are operated at temperatures<100 kelvin. Efforts on fabrication of superconducting devices have mostly been confined to university or government research labs, with little published on the mass producing of superconducting devices. Therefore, many of the methods used to fabricate superconducting devices in these laboratories utilize processes or equipment incapable of rapid, consistent fabrication. Furthermore, the need for low temperature processing currently presents one of the more significant barriers to mass production of superconducting devices.
As superconductor electronics become more prevalent, there is an interest into mass production of superconducting devices utilizing techniques such as is employed in complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processing. Microelectronic devices, such as logic devices or memory devices, utilizing superconducting interconnects have different process specifications compared to traditional semiconductor fabrication, such as CMOS processes. One of the problems with employing CMOS processes on devices employing superconducting interconnects is superconducting properties associated with certain superconductive materials are sensitive to oxygen incorporation in the superconductor's microstructure. Recent data indicates oxygen diffusion into the superconductor is strongly dependent on temperature and typical CMOS processing temperatures (e.g., 400° C.) can result in oxygen diffusion from dielectrics that contain oxygen, such as SiO2 formed by plasma decomposition of TEOS (tetra ethyl ortho silicate).